If AM stands for ante meridiem, PM stands for post meridiem, and AD stands for anno Domini, why is BC English rather than Latin? It seems curious to me that the inventor of our present year-numbering system, Dionysius Exiguus, living in Rome in the sixth century AD, would coin the term “before Christ” in English. Does BC also mean something in Latin, or did it replace a less-known Latin term? –Elton Raynor, Montreal
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French: avJC, avant (before) Jesus Christ; apJC, apres (after) Jesus Christ.
Italian: aC, avanti (before) Cristo; dC, dopo (after) Cristo.
There’s no obvious reason for clinging to AD, and some wish we wouldn’t. Jewish scholars often use the abbreviations BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era), and some archaeologists have begun doing so as well, occasionally translating CE as “Christian era.” Whether this is done out of a desire to use a more secular term or punctiliousness over the fact that Christ wasn’t actually born in 1 AD I dunno, but the practice has spread to other languages. Italians sometimes use era volgare, (common era), and in Finnish one occasionally sees the abbreviations “eaa” and “jaa,” which stand for before and after the (beginning of the) common era.
